Robert Verdon, #42, The Idiot

When you drive into Sydney along the Parramatta Road

(I go on memory here)

the outer suburbs remind you of outer Canberra,

then next come about twenty Queanbeyans laid end to end,

then a patch of Melbourne, and back to Queanbeyan again,

until you spot the towers of the city.

Anyone but the idiot who said death is part of life

will get the feeble humour, or the related wheeze that holds that

every structure in Canberra is taller than its counterpart in Sydney,

the Nation’s Capital is but a village by comparison

but lies 600 metres above sea-level,

closer to the angels and put there no doubt by God.

Jokes aside, this idiot is not Dostoevsky’s;

everything is the fault of human nature: war, say, is crime, not just that of

the Imperium but of those who fight against it —

monkey see, monkey don’t is the rule of engagement,

always do the opposite of your enemies, if they shoot at their

enemies then shoot at your friends …

besides, the unholy, useful idiot would rather

cage cats, roast the cold and homeless, make the Age of Consent posthumous, or limit building heights (Babel! Horrors!) as bent coin for social progress,

while decrying any death-denying repartee

as the word-devilry of the élite (not the monosyllabic Aussie rich),

a workshy intellectual layer whom they hate as much as Goebbels ever did.